Social Network Advertising to Reach $3.08 Billion in 2011

eMarketer has come out with a new estimate that U.S. based marketers will be spend $3.08 billion in advertising on social networking sites this year.

Not only is this a substantial amount of money, but it’s also an increase of 55% compared to 2010, which was a solid $1.99 billion U.S. The estimated 2011 spend accounts for nearly 11% of total online advertising spending in the U.S., eMarketer has said.

Taking a glimpse into the larger picture, worldwide social network spending is expected to rise 71.6% to reach $5.97 billion. This is 8.7% of the total that online advertisers are predicted to spend in 2011.

Is the revamped MySpace going to make a comeback and capture advertising market share from Facebook and Google? It doesn’t look like it. In fact, eMarketer is predicting that advertisers will be spending $4 billion on Facebook alone, $2.19 billion of which will come from U.S. advertisers. Talk about progression – that’s more than double Facebook’s revenue of $1.86 billion for 2010. Throughout the past year Facebook has become not only a key force in the world of social network advertising, but in all of onlineadvertising. With Facebook building its global presence, it will be hard for advertisers to ignore.

There’s always an opportunity to exceed expectations, as well. Especially if Facebook is able to increase its global user base and optimize their ad system to capture more dollars per user. What do you think? Is Facebook’s personal information database powerful enough to eat away at Google’s superior advertising market share?